Zero Hedge introduced me to two new words this morning. I fell for them briefly, then realized they are both amusing examples of turning the tables in the endless propaganda effort to coin words containing unexamined and unearned insults.
One was "pedophrasty," literally meaning not much more than "verbal expressions involving children," but in context the callous use of children as political cannon fodder, as in "How can we ever arrest adults who have a connection of any kind to children who would not be able to accompany them into a jail cell?"
The other was "bigoteering. " I particularly like that one, because I've long been interested in what happened to the word "profit" when it was transformed into "profiteering." Originally "eer"was fairly neutral suffix along the lines of "-er" or "-or," meaning "person who engages in." Some time back, it became a little shady. If the Royal Navy is honorable but letters of marque are not far removed from piracy, then the suspect "private" easily becomes "privateer." If profit becomes a filthy enough concept, "profiteering" acquires a sneering veneer. Soon any word can be similar sullied by adding "-eer," so it seems fair that unscrupulous scandal-mongers (mongeers?) should be pilloried with the term "bigoteering," with its hint of using imaginary bigotry in others for one's own personal gain. So we might also have "ecologeering" and "equiteering."
I like "bigoteering."
ReplyDeleteYou can thank Nassim Nicholas Taleb for those (and a few more).
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